Upcoming Events

Date: Fri, Jan 31
Time: 10:00am – 11:20am
Room: THH B9

Yasha Sapir (PHIL): “Vague assertion”

Abstract:
How should you change your beliefs when someone tells you something vague? A key component of an answer to this question involves the notion of an agent updating on just the semantic content of a vague sentence. This sort of operation also figures in a plausible theory of how to calculate the probability of a conditional. I propose two principles which constrain what an adequate theory for this sort of update should look like; and then I consider the consequences of those principles. It turns out the principles rule out a simple theory of what updating on the semantic content of a vague sentence looks like, on which (1) vague sentences express precise propositions and (2) to update on a sentence’s content you just conditionalize on it. It also turns out that if we spot ourselves a few extra assumptions, non-standard update rules which license the principles I’ve put forward aren’t idempotent. I conclude by suggesting that one way to preserve the two principles I’ve put forward is to say that propositions can be vague and borderlineness is information state sensitive in the same way “might” and “must” probably are.

Date: Tue, Feb 4
Time: 9:30am – 10:30am
Room: GFS 330

Journal Club

Date: Wed, Feb 5
Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm
Room: GFS 330

Andrew Murphy: “Rethinking Morphological Reversals”